At that moment Brexton fell flat on his face. Spluttering in the sand, he said, “Rock under my hand … sharp damn thing.” He pretended his hand hurt while Allie and I exchanged amused glances.
“None of us is as young as we used to be,” said her brother, chuckling, pulling himself up on his elbow. “You’re getting more like Picasso every day.”
“Damned fraud,” said the painter irritably, rubbing the sand out of his face. “Nine tenths of what he’s done I could do better … anybody could do better.”
“And the other tenth?”
“Well, that.…” He shrugged. I’d already found that Brexton, like most painters, hated all other living painters, especially the grand old men. He differed from most in that he was candid, having perhaps more confidence.
He harangued us a while in the brilliant light. I stretched out and shut my eyes, enjoying the warmth on my back. The others did the same, digesting breakfast.
Claypoole was the first to go in the water. Without warning, he leaped to his feet and dashed down to the ocean, diving flat and sharp into the first breaker. He was a powerful swimmer and it was a pleasure to watch him.
We all sat up. Then Mrs. Brexton walked slowly down to the water’s edge where she put on her bathing cap, standing, I could see, in such a way as to hide from us the long bruise on her neck.
She waded out. Brexton got to his feet and followed her. He stopped her for a moment and they talked; then he shrugged and she went on by him, diving awkwardly into the first wave. He stood watching her, his back to us, as she swam slowly out toward Claypoole.
Allie turned to me suddenly. “She’s going too far. There’s an awful undertow.”
“She seems like a fair swimmer. Anyway your brother’s there.”
“My!” exclaimed Miss Lung. “They swim like porpoises. How I envy them!”
Claypoole was now beyond the breakers, swimming easily with the undertow which, apparently, was pulling south for he was already some yards below where he’d gone into the water; he was heading diagonally for shore.
Mrs. Brexton was not yet beyond the breakers; I could see her white bathing cap bobbing against the blue.
Allie and I both got to our feet and joined Brexton at the water’s edge. The water was cold as it eddied about our ankles.
“I don’t think Mildred should go so far out,” said Allie.
Brexton nodded, his eyes still on his wife. “I told her not to. Naturally that was all she needed.”
“It’s quite an undertow,” I said, remembering something about trajectory, about estimated speed: Claypoole was now sliding into shore on the breakers at least thirty feet below us.
As far as the eye could see to north and south the white beach, edged by grassy dunes, extended. People, little black dots, were clustered in front of each house. While, a mile or two down, there was a swarm of them in front of the club. The sky was cloudless; the sun white fire.
Then, without warning, Brexton rushed into the water. Half-running, half-swimming, he moved toward his wife.
She had made no sound but she was waving weakly on the line where the surf began. The undertow had got her.
I dived in too. Allie shouted to her brother who was already on the beach. He joined us, half-running, half-swimming out to Mildred.
Salt water in my eyes, I cut through the surf, aware of Claypoole near me. I never got to Mildred though. Instead, I found myself trying to support Brexton some feet away from his wife. He was gasping for air. “Cramp!” He shouted and began to double up, so I grabbed him while Claypoole shot beyond me to Mildred. With some difficulty, I got Brexton back to shore. Claypoole floated Mildred in.
Exhausted, chilled from the water, I rolled Brexton onto the sand. He sat there for a moment trying to get his breath, holding his side with a look of pain. I was shaking all over from cold, from tension.
Then we both went up on the terrace where the others had gathered in a circle about the white still body of Mildred Brexton.
She lay on her stomach and Claypoole squatted over her, giving artificial respiration. I noticed with horrified fascination the iridescent bubbles which had formed upon her blue lips. As he desperately worked her arms, her lungs, the bubbles one by one burst.
For what seemed like a hundred years there was no sound but that of Claypoole’s exhausted breathing as he worked in grim silence. It came like a shock to us when we heard his voice, the first voice to speak. He turned to his sister, not halting in his labor, and said. “Doctor … quick.”
The sun was at fierce noon when the doctor came, in time to pronounce Mildred Brexton dead by drowning.
Bewildered, as shaky as a defeated boxer on the ropes, Claypoole stood swaying over the dead woman, his eyes on Brexton. He said only two words, said them softly, full of hate. “You devil!” They faced each other over the dead woman’s body. There was nothing any of us could do.
CHAPTER TWO
I
SHORTLY before lunch, to everyone’s surprise, a policeman in plain clothes arrived. “Somebody sent for me,” he announced gloomily. “Said somebody drowned.” He was plainly bored. This kind of drowning apparently was a common occurrence in these parts.
“I can’t think who sent for you,” said Mrs. Veering quickly. “We have already notified the doctor, the funeral home.…”
“I called the police,” said Claypoole. Everyone looked at him, startled. But he didn’t elaborate. We were all seated about the drawing room … all of us except Brexton who had gone to his room after the drowning and stayed there.
The policeman was curt, wanting no nonsense. “How many you ladiesgemmen witness the accident?”
Those who had said so. Mrs. Veering, a tankard of Dubonnet in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, began to explain how she’d been in the house but if she’d only known that poor Mildred.…
The policeman gave her one irritable look and she subsided. Her eyes were puffy and red and she seemed really upset by what had happened. The rest of us were surprisingly cool. Death, when it strikes so swiftly, unexpectedly, has an inexplicable rightness about it, like thunder or rain. Later grief, shock, remorse set in. For now we were all a little embarrassed that we weren’t more distressed by the drowning of Mildred Brexton before our eyes.
“O.K.” The policeman took out a notebook and a stub of pencil. “Give me names real slow and age and place of birth and occupation and relation to deceased and anything you remember about the accident.”
There was an uneasy squeak from Mary Western Lung. “I can’t see what our occupations and … and ages have to do with.…”
The policeman sighed. “I take all you one by one and what you tell me is in strict confidence.” He glanced at the alcove off the drawing room.
Mrs. Veering said, “By all means. You must interview us singly and I shall do everything in my power to.…”
The policeman gestured to Miss Lung to follow him and they crossed the room together, disappearing into the alcove.
The rest of us began to talk uncomfortably. I turned to Allie Claypoole who sat, pale and tense, beside me on the couch. “I didn’t know it could happen like that … so fast,” I said, inadequately.
She looked at me for one dazed moment; then, with an effort, brought me into focus. “Do give me a cigarette.”
I gave her one; I lit it for her; her hands trembled so that I was afraid I might burn her. One long exhalation, however, relaxed her considerably. “It was that awful undertow. I never go out that far. I don’t know why Mildred did … except that she is … she was a wonderful swimmer.”
I was surprised, recalling the slow awkward strokes. “I thought she looked sort of weak … swimming, that is.”
Across the room Mrs. Veering was crying softly into her Dubonnet while Fletcher Claypoole, calm now, his mysterious outburst still unexplained, tried to comfort her. From the alcove I heard a high shrill laugh from Mary Western Lung and I could almost see that greedy fat hand of hers descending in a lustful arc o
n the policeman’s chaste knee.
“I suppose it was her illness,” said Allie at last. “There’s no other explanation. I’m afraid I didn’t notice her go in. I wasn’t aware of anything until Brexton started in after her.”
“Do you think a nervous breakdown could affect the way somebody swam? Isn’t swimming like riding a bicycle? you do it or you don’t.”
“What are you suggesting?” Her eyes, violet and lovely, were turned suddenly on mine.
“I don’t know.” I wondered why she was suddenly so sharp. “I only thought.…”
“She was weakened, that’s all. She’d been through a great deal mentally and apparently it affected her physically. That’s all.”
“She might’ve had what they call the ‘death wish.’ ”
“I doubt if Mildred wanted to die,” said Allie, a little drily. “She wasn’t the suicide-type … if there is such a thing.”
“Well, it can be unconscious, can’t it?” Like everyone else I am an expert in psychoanalysis: I can tell a trauma from a vitrine at twenty paces and I know all about Freud without ever having read a line he’s written.
“I haven’t any idea. Poor Brexton. I wonder what he’ll do now.”
“Was it that happy a marriage?” I was surprised, remembering the bruise on her neck, the screams the night before: happy didn’t seem the right word for whatever it was their life had been together.
Allie shrugged. “I don’t think there are any very happy marriages, at least in our world, but there are people who quarrel a lot and still can’t live without each other.”
“They were like that?”
“Very much so … especially when she began to crack up … he was wonderful with her, considering the fact he’s got a terrible temper and thinks of no one but himself. He put up with things from her that … well, that you wouldn’t believe if I told you. He was very patient.”
“Was she always this way? I mean the way she seemed last night?”
Allie didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, “Mildred was what people call difficult most of her life. She could charm anybody if she wanted to; if she didn’t want to, she could be very disagreeable.”
“And at the end she didn’t want to?”
“That’s about it.”
Mary Western Lung in high good humor emerged, giggling, from the alcove. The policeman, red of face and clearly angry, said: “You next,” nodding at Allie. Miss Lung took her place beside me.
“Oh, they’re so wonderful these police people! It’s the first time I’ve ever talked to one that close and under such grim circumstances. He was simply wonderful with me and we had the nicest chat. I love the virile he-man type, don’t you?”
I indicated that I could take he-men or leave them alone.
“But of course you’re a man and wouldn’t see what a woman sees in them.” I resented faintly not being included among that rugged number; actually, our police friend could have been wrapped around the smallest finger of any athlete; however, Miss Lung saw only the glamor of the job … the subhuman gutturals of this employee of the local administration excited the authoress of “Book-Chat.” She scrounged her great soft pillow of a flank against mine and I was pinned between her and the arm of the couch.
I struck a serious note in self-defense. “Did he have anything interesting to say about the accident?”
The penwoman shook her head. I wondered wildly if there was a bone beneath that mass of fat which flowed like a Dali soft watch over my own thigh: she was more like a pulpy vegetable than a human being, a giant squash. “No, we talked mostly about books. He likes Mickey Spillane.” She wrinkled her nose which altered her whole soft face in a most surprising way; I was relieved when she unwrinkled it. “I told him I’d send him a copy of Little Biddy Bit for his children but it seems he isn’t married. So I told him he’d love reading it himself … so many adults do. I get letters all the time saying.…”
I was called next but not before I had heard yet another installment in the life of Mary Western Lung.
The policeman was trying to do his job as quickly as possible. He sat scribbling in his notebook; he didn’t look up as I sat down in the chair beside the Queen Anne desk.
“Name?”
“Peter Cutler Sargeant Two.”
“Two what?” He looked up.
“Two of the same name, I guess … the second. You make two vertical lines side by side.”
He looked at me with real disgust.
“Age … place of birth … present address.”
“Thirty-one … Hartford, Connecticut … 280 East 49th Street.”
“Occupation?”
I paused, remembering my promise to Mrs. Veering. I figured, however, the law was reasonably discreet. “Public relations. My own firm. Sargeant Incorporated: 60 East 55th Street.”
“How long know deceased?”
“About eighteen hours.”
“That’s all.” I started to go; the policeman stopped me, remembering he’d forgotten an important question. “Notice anything unusual at time of accident?”
I said I hadn’t.
“Describe what happened in own words.” I did exactly that, briefly; then I was dismissed. Now that I look back on it, it seems strange that no one, including myself, considered murder as a possibility.
II
Lunch was a subdued affair. Mrs. Veering had recovered from her first grief at the loss of a beloved niece and seemed in perfect control of herself or at least perfectly controlled by the alcohol she’d drunk which, in her case, was the same thing.
Brexton received a tray in his own room. The rest of us sat about awkwardly after lunch making conversation, trying not to mention what had happened and yet unable to think of anything else to talk about.
The second reaction had begun to set in and we were all shocked at last by what had happened, especially when Mrs. Veering found Mildred’s scarf casually draped over the back of a chair, as though she were about to come back at any moment and claim it.
It had been originally planned that we go out to the Maidstone Club for cocktails but at the last minute Mrs. Veering had canceled our engagement. The dance that night was still in doubt. I had made up my mind, however, that I’d go whether the others did or not. I hoped they wouldn’t as a matter of fact: I could operate better with Liz if I were on my own.
I had a chat with Mrs. Veering in the alcove while the others drifted about, going to their rooms, to the beach outside … in the house, out of the house, not quite knowing, any of them, how to behave under the circumstances. No one wanted to go in the water, including myself. The murderous ocean gleamed blue and bright in the afternoon.
“Well, do you think it will upset things?” Mrs. Veering looked at me shrewdly.
“Upset what?”
“The party … what else? This will mean publicity for me … the wrong kind.”
I began to get her point. “We have a saying.…”
“All publicity is good publicity.” She snapped that out fast enough. “Socially, however, that isn’t true. Get a certain kind of publicity and people will drop you flat.”
“I can’t see how having a guest drown accidentally should affect you one way or the other.”
“If that’s all there is to it, it won’t.” She paused significantly; I waited for more of the same but she shifted her line of attack. “When the newspaper people come, I want you to act as my spokesman. One is on his way over here right now. But don’t let on what your job really is. Just say you’re a guest and that I’m upset by what’s happened … as indeed I am … and that you’ve been authorized to speak for me.”
“What’ll I say?”
“Nothing.” She smiled. “What else can you say? That Mildred was my niece; that I was very fond of her; that she’d been ill (I think you’d better make some point of that) and her strength wasn’t equal to the undertow.”
“They’ve taken it … her, the body I mean, to the morgue, haven’t they?” The doctor a
nd Brexton had carried her in to the house and I hadn’t seen the corpse again.
“I don’t know. The doctor took it away in an ambulance. I’ve already made arrangements for the undertakers to look after everything … they’re in touch with the doctor who is an old friend of mine.” She paused thoughtfully, fiddling with the pile of papers on her desk. I was surprised by the rapid change in her mood. I attributed this to her peculiar habits. Most alcoholics I knew were the same: gregarious, kindly, emotional people, quite irresponsible in every way and unpredictable. I had sat next to her at lunch and what had seemed to be a tumbler full of ice water was, I’d noticed on closer examination, a glass full of gin. At the end of lunch the glass was empty.
Then she said: “I would appreciate it, Peter, if nothing were said about the … the misunderstanding last night.”
“You mean the screams?”
She nodded. “It could do me a great deal of harm socially if people were to get … well, the wrong idea about Brexton and Mildred. He was devoted to her and stayed at her side all through that terrible breakdown. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings about that.”
“Are there apt to be any? The poor woman went swimming and drowned; we all saw it happen and that’s that.”
“I know. Even so, you know what gossips people are. I shouldn’t like one of the newspapermen, one of those awful columnists, to start suggesting things.”
“I’ll see to it,” I said with more authority than was strictly accurate under the circumstances.
“That’s why I want you to handle the press for me … and another thing,” she paused; then: “Keep the others away from the newspapermen.”
I was startled by this request. “Why? I mean what difference does it make? We all saw the same thing. The police have our testimonies.”
“The police will keep their own counsel. Just do as I ask and I’ll be very grateful to you.”
I shrugged. “If I can, I will, but what’s to stop one of your guests from talking to the press?”
“You, I hope.” She changed the subject. “I’ve had the nicest chat with Alma Edderdale who wishes to be remembered to you. She checked in at the Sea Spray this morning.”